Page 37 of Just Between Us

I smiled down at my phone as it kept pinging. It was rare for me to feel included. I enjoyed watching these two families circle each other and pretend like they had less in common than they did. It was a wonder they couldn’t see it.

Emotionally compromised.

In business that effect was when you were too close to something to see the truth, even if it was staring you in the face. In the midst of chaos, your analysis could be subverted by emotion that led to a lack of objectivity.

I blew out a breath and rolled my neck, wondering whether that was what was happening to me. It was Monday morning, and my eyes were nearly crossed trying to organize the mounds of digital and literal paperwork to sift through.

She’s not Team Sullivan.

A flutter tickled low in my belly as I reread Royal’s words. He presented as a carefree jokester, but I knew from his interactions on Pulse that he hid a possessive and dominant side.

When I win, you let me teach you how to let go a little bit.

“Pffft.” I shook my head. I didn’t need to let go of anything. My life was fine. I was rebuilding my career. My apartment was decently adequate as temporary housing. I was good at my job, and that was what was most important.

Sure, I didn’t have a ton of friends, but who has time for that? My sex life was a little lackluster and consisted of me obsessing over a sexy stranger on the internet, but it wasfine. Only ... he wasn’t quite a stranger anymore.

I flipped through more paperwork and bit back a frustrated growl. The relentless achiever that lived inside of me had flipped a switch during the paintball match. I simply couldn’t lose. I didn’t know how.

When I had tossed Royal a smug smile, reminding him he had just lost the bet, I hadn’t anticipated the ache in my chest when his handsome face fell. The rest of the morning we continued to exchange friendly jabs, but it didn’t change the fact that I had won.

That meant that Royal was going to leave me alone to do the job I was hired to do. The man I had gotten to know over the past several months was a man of his word.

I should have been celebrating a win.

Instead, I was marinating in an odd feeling of vague disappointment. I blew out an uneasy breath and tried once again to refocus and forget about how good it felt to do something fun for a change.

For me, work was a different kind of fun—a controlled, predictable, steady feeling of accomplishment.

As the morning wore on, I went from sitting across from JP at the outdated desk to sitting on the dusty floor and crouching over banker’s boxes filled with old tax filings. I was still trying to tease out where Russell King might be hiding his subpar business practices. Nothing on the surface seemed off, but the deeper I dug, the more confused I became.

Something wasoff.

In business, you learned to follow the money. Though it was a spaghetti trail of redundant paperwork, when I pulled a thread, more questions slowly revealed themselves. I would need to dig deeper, but it appeared that Russell was keeping portions of the businesses King Equities acquired for himself and siphoning off the money ... but for what?

I thumbed through the paperwork for the third time, pausing on the address of yet another shell company purchased under the King Equities umbrella.

I used my phone to search the address on the internet and found it was a home address. “What’s the connection to the residential property in Kenilworth, Illinois?”

JP frowned and outstretched his hand. I leaned over to hand him the paper, and he snatched it from my grasp.

“I googled it. It’s coming up residential.” I looked back at my phone. “Fancy place.”

I watched my boss grow silent. His grim mouth formed into a hard line as he stared at the page he was reading.

With a bland look, he handed it back. “He has a second family. I can only assume this is their primary residence.”

Stunned into silence, I blinked. “I’m sorry. Awhat?”

He sighed and looked at me. “We recently learned that my father’s marriage to my mother was illegitimate. He has a long-standing marriage to another woman named Elizabeth Peake. They have children.”

The emotionless way he outlined the facts of his father’s double life was astounding. A stream of nosy, highly unprofessional questions poured through me, but I tamped them down. JP had already moved on, using his computer as an excuse to change the subject and dive deeper into our work.

Frustrated and exhausted, I exhaled, letting my arms go limp in my lap. “What am I doing here?”

JP’s head lifted and he frowned at me. “Your job.”

I shook my head. “Sure, my job. I get that. But whatismy job? What are we even digging for? I can’t help but feel like I would be more successful if I actually understood what I was looking for.”

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